Welcome to Hell
by Luna Bunnie
Summary: 'Stood before Death, all Hallows in hand, Harry Potter welcomes his new foe.' The death of his parents at the age of 6 left him estranged from the wizarding world with Sirius Black and Albus Dumbledore as his tutors to face the next big challenge. AU


_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor do I make any money from writing this story. Neither do I own any of the companies or copyrighted objects mentioned here forth. _

**Summary:** 'Stood before Death, all Hallows in hand, Harry Potter welcomes his new foe.' Harry is raised from birth to fight Voldemort. The death of his parents at the age of 6 left him estranged from the wizarding world with Sirius Black and Albus Dumbledore as his tutors to face the next big challenge. AU

**Extra Info:** This is a complete AU, Harrys parents died later on in Harrys life, he never went to Hogwarts, and he was raised by Sirius and Remus. He is tutored and trained indefinitely through his childhood by some of the most powerful and influential Witches and Wizards in the world, out of sight of the rest of the world on a remote island off the East Coast of England. Fighting Voldemort was one thing, but having to conquer Death as well was something he never bargained for.

**Warnings: Strong language, violence, gore, sexual situations**. The story itself is quite dark. Relationships wise it's more likely to be… I'm going to say 'passionate', as opposed to fluffy.

**Welcome to Hell**

_You Have Been Warned:_ _Prologue_

Wandering through the woods late one night in June, desperate for the release her family's stressful lifestyle that only came with the cool summers air, the last thing Ginny Weasley expected to come across was the mangled body of an unknown stranger on the riverbed.

The tension in the Weasley household was at an all-time high. Her dad had been forced to work overtime with the threat of his job over his head, meaning that he was never in the house any more, and the fear for the safety of her brothers was driving her mother to despair. Five of the six had been called away to fight in the war against Voldemort by the Ministry, as all men above school age had been. Her youngest elder brother, Ron, would be called away after he had finished his final year of school, next year. There was always the very slim chance that Voldemort would be taken down before then, but she doubted it.

More than once she had caught her mother sat crying silently in one of their empty bedrooms, at a loss for what to do with herself all day when she had nothing to distract her from the fact that they were out there fighting, risking their lives, and there was no way of telling when they'd be back. She, like many other mothers in the wizarding world, was left waiting with a foreboding dread for the black letter from the Ministry, telling them their son had been lost in combat, hoping against hope that they'd get the navy blue one, telling of their son's return home, though the chances were persistently slim.

Many of the lessons in school had been adjusted to help those who were willing to fight stay alive for long enough to have some effect on the war, most of the women in the older years, such as herself, using some of their free periods to learn basic healing skills from the school nurse, Madame Pomfrey.

After finding herself out in the woods behind her house once more, after an unneeded argument with her brother, she had meandered slowly down to the edge of the river that ran half way around her house. There had been a loud roaring in her ears and a flash of light as something literally fell from the sky, through the heavy wards around the house that her eldest brother Bill had built. The initial surprise at something getting through the curse breakers meticulously placed spell work faded into fear quite sharply with a dull pang in her stomach. It was a man.

He seemed to be unconscious, but she drew her wand nonetheless, edging towards him through the charred and burnt trees that had been made by the forced crack in the wards that the man had successfully slipped through. On his front, his back was visible through the torn and singed black shirt he was wearing, vicious welts visible there. His long shaggy black hair was matted with blood, and he had a long jagged cut on the side of his forehead she could see that went down the side of his face, narrowly missing his eye.

She lowered her wand half way as she got close enough to see the entirety of the damage done to the mysterious person. Biting her lip, she slid her wand back into its holster. "Mother forgive me." She mumbled under her breath as she knelt down beside him and carefully rolled him onto his back, checking his pulse.

He was still alive, but definitely unconscious. Heaving a sigh, unsure of what to do, she looked around her at the destruction he had inadvertently caused. If he was a Death Eater, what use would he have for breaking through her brothers wards? What could a Death Eater possibly want from the Weasleys? Other than the fact that her parents were in the Order of the Phoenix, of course. But the location of the house had become undetectable the moment the wards had gone up. No one could know it was here unless they were invited onto their land.

Death Eater or not, he was badly injured, and she knew her mum could fix him up in a snap if she could get him back to the house. But she was underage, and, although the Ministry couldn't trace the magic she would have to do to get him back there back to her, her mum wasn't keen on her doing magic underage. Even if it was to help someone. Saying that, she wasn't so sure her mum would be too keen on her taking a stranger back to the house.

One more look at the man's unconscious face, noting another rather brutal looking cut on his neck, she made up her mind. She couldn't just leave him out here to die. Levitating him carefully through the dense trees to the house, she was greeted with not her mothers, but Ron's angry face.

"What the hell are you doing, Ginny?"

"Will you shut up mithering and go get mum?" She snapped. "I found him in the woods. I don't know who he is, or how he got here, but if we don't help him he will die."

He followed her upstairs, where she took him into the first bedroom available, her brother Charlie's old room. "Mum got called away to an urgent Order meeting. She'll go ballistic when she comes back, you know she will!" he hissed lowly, as if afraid his mother could hear him all the way from London.

She carefully levitated him down on the bed and cast a quick diagnostic spell. It didn't look good. And she wasn't anywhere near as skilled as her mother was when it came to healing people. Knowing she was unable to contact her mum while she was away on Order business, she pulled an elastic band off her wrist and tied her hair up in a ponytail with it. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she ignored the way it shook in her throat and turned to Ron.

"Right." She said firmly. "I need you to go and get all of mum's first aid stuff from the kitchen; I don't know what I'm going to need."

Ron, accepting that he didn't have any say in the matter, ran off downstairs without a word.

She didn't know where to start. The spell had come up with a lode of gibberish she didn't quite understand, sickly green numbers and values hanging in the air that she couldn't comprehend. She recognised that he was undernourished, magically drained and dehydrated, but that was about it. Deciding that assessing the damage to his torso might me a good place to start, she tore open the front of his shirt with a pocket knife her brother Charlie had given her before he had left. Some of the material was stuck firmly to his skin and she had to gingerly peel it back away from what was a severe burn across the right side of his chest.

Now that she could deal with. As a vague sense of relief flooded through her, she rummaged through the supplies that her brother had brought her to find some antiseptic cream to clean out the wound and some of the paste her mother had made not too long ago to treat burns. Ron sat in silence on a chair nearby as she worked, knowing he would be of no help, and she was grateful. The last thing she needed was him asking her questions about how she had found him and what had happened when she was trying to concentrate.

Covering the wound with gauze, she left the minor marks on the rest of his torso in favour of the deeper one on his face. It went through a jagged looking scar on the left side of his forehead, distorting it. After cleaning it like she did the burn, she twirled her wand in a circle-like fashion down the wound, murmuring the healing spell that visibly stitched the parted skin back together. It was while she was treating the one on his neck that she finally noticed the dog tags hanging from his neck.

Ron jumped out of his seat. "Does it say who he is? Death Eaters don't wear dog tags, do they? They have dark marks." He sounded anxious, his eyes flicking down to the man's wrist, where there was in fact, no dark mark. Not all of them were marked though. That was the problem. Voldemort never did mark his spy's, it would have given them away otherwise.

"It says… it's just the usual stuff, blood type, 'CoE' I don't know what that means…"

"Church of England. He must have a muggle parent or something; he would have been christened… You know muggles believe in that 'god' crap. It should have his initials or surname on it."

"'JP' and Black. They don't match…" she frowned. Before Ron could speak, she noticed something else that made her heart soar and all of her fears about him possibly working for Voldemort fly out of the window. "It says 'OoTP' he's in the Order!"

Ron blew out a long breath. "Well thank god for that. That must be why he knew we were here. We're listed as a safe house. Did he portkey in?"

She shook her head as she turned the tags over in her hand, looking at the smooth metal backs of them. "No. There was a flash of light and he fell out of the sky. I don't know how he got through the wards, but whatever he did, it burned the grass around him."

"We should contact someone from the Order…" he said slowly.

But she had noticed something else. There was something written in almost undetectably small letters on the back of one of them. She squinted at it, trying to make out what it said. "'If found call:' there's a string of eleven numbers. Isn't that a muggle thing, 'calling' someone, with numbers." She looked over at Ron.

He nodded slowly. "I think so. I could floo Hermione and ask her."

She finally turned him onto his back to assess the damage there, and found long, deep swollen welts. They both winced in unison. "That might be a good idea, actually, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do here… and I think one of his ribs are broken but I can't be sure, and I don't know how to fix that. His wrist definitely is. It's a good job he's not awake…"

Ron shook his head slowly. "What do you think happened to him?"

Images of him being tortured by Death Eaters flashed through her mind and she cringed. "I don't want to think about it. He looks… quite young. You know. Not as old as you would expect of an Order member. I don't understand how this could have happened… they're so careful about making sure no one gets captured by… them. Because things like this happen!" anger welled up inside her, unbidden, as she realised that he was probably not much older than her, barely out of school, and the Order had thrown him out on the battlefield, got him into this horrible state, half dead.

Ron didn't say anything, instead choosing to go and contact Hermione, who arrived within seconds, something small and metallic in her hand. "Merlin, Ron, when you said he was hurt I didn't think… step back a minute Ginny." She said softly, pulling her long curly brown hair back into a ponytail as she had done, rolling up her sleeves and putting the thing in her hand on the side.

Ginny helped as best she could, though she mostly ended up handing the older witch various salves, only really of much help when it came to bandaging up his torso. Once he was back on his back, Hermione pronounced his ribs as bruised, but not broken, and had her help by holding is arm still as she made his wrist click back into place with a simple spell.

"You really need to teach me that spell, Hermione." she said, breathing out with relief when she realised that it looked like they'd managed to fix him up for the most part.

Hermione studied the man's face, as if she knew him somehow. "What was it about a number?"

"On the back of the dog tags." Said Ron quickly, jumping in to give his girlfriend a quick one armed hug and a mumbled 'You're amazing, you know that, right?'.

A faint blush spread across her cheeks as she took a look at the tags herself. A small smirk spread across her face. "If found…" she laughed shortly. "Oh that's funny. Who ever made these had a sense of humour. It's like something you would write up an alcoholics arm in case they got lost while rather drunk." She shook her head. "I brought my mobile with me. It's a muggle thing. My mum bought me one over the summer when I was 13 so I could contact them when I was out and about during the holidays. Unfortunately, they don't work at school. I never thought it would come in handy in the magical world though, who'd have thought?"

She picked up the metal thing on the side table, pressing buttons on the front while periodically checking the tags.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling the number." She said simply as she pressed one more button and held it up to her ear.

Two seconds later her eyes widened as a muffled voice came from it. "Oh! Hello, this is Hermione Granger. I found your…" She checked the dog tags. "You know the initials and the surname don't match on these tags? J-P and Black. My friend found him but she's a pureblood, she doesn't know what a phone is, never mind how to use one."

There was a pause and a huge smile spread across her face. She pressed a button and held out the phone, where the once muffled voice blasted out as if he were in the room. "Oh, you beautiful, beautiful child!" Hermione's eyebrows knitted together with the grin on her face as she tried not to laugh the oddity that was the man that was speaking.

"See they told me about you. You're highly spoken of amongst the Order, young lady. Now how did he- you know what never mind, where are you?"

"The Burrow, do you know of it?"

A loud barking laugh exploded from the phone. "Know of it? How the hell did he-" there was a loud noise in the background. "Right, yes, okay – don't hit me, woman, he's fine!" There was a pause. "He is okay right?"

"Yes, he's still unconscious, but we've fixed him up a bit."

There were more noises in the background. "We'll be there in a second."

Hermione had just enough time to say "Second floor, first room on the right." Before there was a loud beep.

She pressed another button on the phone and put it down on the side again. "Well then…" She took a deep breath. "Eventful day, eh?" She smiled at the two Weasley siblings.

Ron looked a little pale. "You just sent random strangers to my house, Hermione."

She looked affronted. "Oh for Merlin's sake, Ronald, they're in the Order! And the man who I spoke to was his Godfather." She held a hand to her chest. "Do they really talk about me at Head Quarters?"

Ginny nodded, smiling at the girl as she sat down heavily, lost for words. Her mother had mentioned more than once the speak of bringing Hermione Granger into the Order at an earlier age than they usually allow, not for an active role, for her smarts. She was one of the brightest witches of her age, and her professors at Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry had not missed her promise.

When the man on the phone had said, 'a second' he wasn't lying. Hermione was barely in her seat before there was a loud bang downstairs and the sound of thundering feet as two people came running up the stairs. A tall stocky man with shaggy black hair and high cheekbones, and a leaner man with sandy blonde hair and amber eyes, both looking the same age, though young, as most magical folk often did for a time.

The one with the dark hair ran straight over to the man Ginny had rescued from the woods, and moved his hair away from the cut she had stitched together magically down the side of his face. The other leant heavily against the doorframe, relief so clear on their faces it was a wonder one of them didn't burst into tears. The one with black hair did, however laugh loudly, proving him to be the man who they spoke to on the phone.

"Where did you find him?" he asked softly.

Ginny stepped forwards. "I found him in the woods," she said. "There was this big flash of light and…" She trailed off.

He turned to face the three teenagers that had found his godson, who had been missing for a week by this point. His face lit up like a Christmas tree. "Little Ginny Weasley!" he said with a wide grin. "Why did I know that you'd find your way into our lives again?" He pulled her into an unwarranted bear hug, to which she was too stunned to respond.

"Uhm…"

The man in the doorway rolled his eyes. "Let her go, Sirius, she won't remember you. She was five at the time, if I remember rightly."

'Sirius' let her go, but his hands hovered a millimetre above her shoulders. He shook his head. "Maybe not, but I think I will have to jog her memory." He turned back to his godson.

The man with the sandy blonde hair pushed himself away from the doorframe. "Remus Lupin." He said shortly. "And he would be Sirius Black. We've been silent members of the Order of the Phoenix for the past 11 years or so, we did have a more active role in it before then, however." He clacked his tongue. "Hurry up, mate. Mary will be going spare waiting at Hogwarts all on her own."

"She's got Dumbledore, Moony, I know he's off his rocker, but he's not bad company."

"Not my point, Sirius."

Sirius flicked his wand over the man's face, but didn't say anything. There was a small flicker of green as his eyes opened slowly, revealing the most beautiful green eyes Ginny had ever seen. She felt her heart jump into her throat as they reminded her of something she couldn't quite put her fingers on.

"Si-" his throat was raw, barely able to speak, not that his godfather would let him.

"S'alright, pup. We've got you. Go to sleep."

Sirius watched his eyes close again for a moment before hoisting the teenager up into his arms. "Come on then." He said to Remus, with a smirk. "I do believe we've got our boy back."

Remus rolled his eyes again.

Ginny stepped forward as they went to leave, wanting to reach out, though she wasn't quite sure why. Did she know him? Sirius and Remus seemed to know her, at the least….

Sirius noticed the gesture she made and grinned even wider. "Don't worry, love. You'll see him soon enough." He winked at her and she felt her face heat up.

And just like that, unbeknownst to her, Harry Potter walked out of Ginny Weasleys life for the second time in a just over a decade.

**Chapter One: Turning the Tables**

I shot up in bed suddenly, covered in sweat, panting heavily as I was forced painfully out of an odd dream. Thunder flashed outside my bedroom window as I tried to remember what I had been dreaming about, my entire body shaking with adrenaline. I was four… nearly five. A young boy a similar age to me was crying, his messy black hair slightly too long, in need of cutting. He had looked over at her with these huge green eyes, filled with tears, and her heart had ached for him. His green eyes were the only colour in the room. Had I dreamt in black and white?

They were in her living room, on their own. A woman was crying in the kitchen but she was too focused on him to care. "My mummy and daddy are gone, Ginny." He had sobbed. "They left me, they're gone!"

"They didn't leave you…" I'd wanted to tell him that they'd still be with him, but I was so young, I couldn't articulate it quite right. So I did the one thing I could do, and gave him a hug.

A tall man with long black hair came in, holding the hand of a woman with long blonde hair. Looking back on the dream in retrospect, I realised that he was Sirius Black. "Come on, we've got to go." He had said.

The boy frowned at me as I let him go, as if he knew that his leaving was more permanent than I did. He sniffed. "I have to go, Ginny."

I remember standing there, numb as he walked away, into the arms of the woman with blonde hair. "Bye, Harry."

Harry. Who was Harry?

Letting out an annoyed growl, I pulled her hair back into a big clip sat on the bedside table. Knowing that she wouldn't get any more sleep that night, she flung the blankets back and made her way leisurely down the stairs, catching the time on a clock on the way down to be 6 am. Mum would be up. Finding her at the kitchen table nursing a cup of tea, I went to make my own with the water in the teapot sat on the aga. When I joined her at the table, she finally acknowledged my presence, tearing her eyes away from the magical clock sat on the table, five of the hands, all belonging to my brothers, pointing at 'Mortal Peril'.

"Morning, dear. It's not like you to be up this early." She said with a measure of surprise.

I snorted. "I had a weird dream." I looked up at her with my eyebrows furrowed in intense thought. "Have you ever dreamt in black and white?"

She laughed. "I can't say I have, no, why, did you?"

I nodded slowly. "It was weird. You know your cousin, Sirius Black, the one who came for his Godson last week? He was in it. And a blonde woman. I was five, and I was in the living room. There was this boy… he was crying. His mum and dad had just died, and I didn't know what to say, I was only five, it's not something that you can really comprehend. And then he had to go… it was weird. He had the most brilliant green eyes. They were the only thing that had colour in the dream. They reminded me of…." I trailed off, knowing I was being silly. There was no way that the boy could be Sirius' Godson. I didn't know him. Did I?

I watched as my mum tilted her head to the side, a wide smile spreading across her face. It was the first one I'd seen in weeks. "Little Harry, yeah. I wondered when you'd remember him."

I felt my stomach flop, my fingers tightening around my mug to the point that my knuckles went white. "What?" I whispered, speechless.

"Harry. See, there was this family, friends of Sirius', lovely young couple. I met them in the Order. I was pregnant with Ron when she was pregnant with Harry. We vowed that we would have a play date, only it didn't really happen until they were both two years old. Something went wrong and they had to go into hiding for a couple of years. They suddenly appeared out of the blue, I invited them around for lunch. He and Ron made friends pretty quick, but he didn't half take a shine to you." That smile was back again. "He was such a sweet little boy. He really loved you, you know, so protective of you. He was your best friend…. But his parents died when he was six, nearly seven. He disappeared off the face of the earth for a couple of months with Sirius and Mary, that blonde woman you mentioned. When they came back he had this horrible scar on his forehead…" she shook her head, looking sad. "He came to say goodbye to you, and then they went off again."

"And that was it? Why don't I remember him?" I asked frantically, my heart thudding hard in my chest. This seems like something you would remember. Losing your best friend.

"You didn't understand for a long time why he was gone. You asked after him every now and again, and you would cry because you missed him a bit. But… one day when you were six you just… stopped. Like he didn't even exist anymore. I thought maybe you had just forgotten about him… but you may very well have just found some way to make yourself forget. Pushed him so far back into your mind that you just pretended that he was a figment of your imagination, then you really did forget about him." The smile was gone completely now, replaced by that horrible frown I had become so accustomed to seeing.

I was silent for a long moment, as I tried to remember other instances where he and I were together, but it hurt, and I had to stop. "What happened to him? Where did they go?"

She shrugged her shoulders, taking a sip of her tea. "Nobody would say anything. As far as I know, he has been living with Sirius, Remus and Mary on an Island somewhere in an undisclosed location. He's been trained from the age of 7 in combat, at his own asking. He was initiated into the Order when he was 15 officially, but I know he has done work for Dumbledore before now. He's the Wizarding Worlds best kept secret. Well known and influential. The most powerful teenager on the planet. And no one ever sees or hears of him."

It was as if someone had just flipped a switch in my head. "Harry Potter?" I exclaimed. "He was – I was friends with-" I lowered my voice inexplicably. "_Harry Potter_?"

She nodded. "Harry Potter."

Well, that explained the dog tags… kind of. 'J' for James, maybe?

"I have to see him." I said harshly, pushing my tea into the middle of the table and turning to run up the stairs.

"Ginny – Gin – wait!" I heard mum clattering after me, but I didn't care.

I wanted answers, and I wanted them now. Harry _bloody_ Potter.

I scoffed, throwing my pyjamas off and pulling on some fresh clothes even as my mum flung my door open.

"No. No…_ No_!" she said with varying degrees of disbelief and anger. "You cannot, I repeat, _cannot_ go to see him. He is in hiding for a reason. You found him in the woods outside our house beaten half to death _for a reason_… Ginny, he will come to you when he comes back. But that can't be now, you know it can't. It has been well speculated that he will return to the wizarding world after he takes Voldemort down…"

I pulled on a hoodie to keep me warm in the cold outside. July or not, it was July in England. Hence the fact that it was raining heavily outside, and likely 10 degrees or so. "Oh like he's going to come back to the wizarding world just because Voldemorts gone!" I spat. "He's Harry Potter, mum. He took Voldemort down when he was six, and again when he was 15. He's been pitched as the one to kill him for good. He's so famous, I don't think anyone would leave him alone if he came back. And he's not-" I felt tears well up in my eyes. _He's not like that._

I finished in my head. He was always so shy, I suddenly remembered. He would not like being in the lime light all the time. I let out a loud sob. "How could you keep this from me?" I cried.

My mum had the decency to look ashamed, although the effect was light. She closed the bedroom door. "I can't let you go, Ginny. You don't even know where he is, you'll get hurt."

"I don't care; I need to talk to him." There were so many questions going through my head. I just needed to talk to him. That was it. I needed to remember who he was, what he was like, see how he'd grown up since we were little and find out what it was that made me want to be best friends with him in the first place. Seeing him might bring it all back, break open that lock that I had put on my memories of him.

"Oh for Merlin's sake, Ginny. You were babies when you were friends, stop being so dramatic. You don't even remember him."

Her words stung, and she knew it, I could see the regret on her face, but she didn't apologise.

"We were best friends for nearly four years. And for some reason I built a wall around everything that I knew of him. Then out of nowhere he lands on my doorstep, and I'm told that no, he wasn't just Harry, a little boy I was friends with as a kid, he was THE Harry Potter. Boy-who-lived, chosen one, call him what you will. And he had to leave me behind. Think about it mum. If he hadn't gone, we would have still been friends, we would have gone to school together, grown up together. And that was taken from me. I have to see him, to… at the very least, close that chapter of my life. The one that he was in. You must understand that." I pleaded with her.

But she shook her head. "No, Ginny. Give it a few hours, calm down, and then you will realise how over dramatic you are being. You were friends with him for a few years as a toddler. I'm sure you have a lot to ask him. And you will, eventually. If he remembers you." When she walked out of my bedroom door, she closed it behind her. Then locked it. And I knew she'd be stood outside, so I couldn't just unlock it with my wand.

I felt a stab of pain through my chest. "What if he didn't remember me?"

I turned around and was hit with sudden inspiration as my bedroom window caught my attention. Without thinking about the consequences, or the fact that I didn't know where he was, that he perhaps didn't remember me, and my mum was right, running off to reunite with someone I'd been friends with as a toddler was a little bit over dramatic… I pushed open my window and dropped down carefully on top of the kitchen roof, jutting out from the rest of the house.

Losing my balance slightly as I dropped down from there to the ground, I landed flat on my back in my mums flower patch. Groaning and rolling over onto my knees, something gold and silver caught my eye. The gold plated silver Snitch necklace I'd had since I was little had come undone around my neck as I had fallen and had landed in the mud. Sitting back on my heels in the rain, I accidentally tracked mud through my hair as I pushed it back out of my face, the clip that had been in my hair lying somewhere nearby. Where was it exactly that I had gotten it, again?

The whole world shook and spun around me as I was yanked out of my position in the flowers outside my childhood home.


End file.
